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Tuesday, May 20, 2008

WEEK ONE

Well, week one and a couple of days.

A couple of upgrades await at the new site, including a daring innovation I call a “blogroll”, which lists other sites of interest. It should be added today. Also, moderation has been made speedier - although evidently not speedy enough for many PSRs (previous site readers). Apologies for that, but Australian libel laws are ******* ******* ridiculous and require that each comment be viewed before publication. Incidentally, naughty words will be ******* cut or edited, so don’t ******* use them. And editing the ******* things takes time, which causes delays, which adds to concerns about moderation not being ******* speedy enough.

(Not that many comments have required editing or cutting. Stunningly few, in fact. And the numerous lefties who’ve endlessly complained about being banned here and who vowed to show up in number at the new site simply haven’t appeared. Wimps.)

By the way, your moderators at the new site are Tran and Nkomo, two hard-working young immigrants keen to make careers for themselves in the lucrative Australian moderation caper. A live-and-let-live type of guy, Nkomo is inclined to let even the most contentious comments through. He doesn’t have issues with anybody, God bless him. Nkomo is a Libran who lists cricket and peace as his major interests.

But Tran is absolutely terrifying. The other day, down in the moderation pit, he got into a fight with one of Joe Hildebrand’s nightshift moderators over possessive apostrophes. The ambulance guys said they’d never before seen such elaborate knife wounds.

Thing is, Tran was armed only with a thesaurus. Sharpened, admittedly, but still just a thesaurus.

Monday, May 12, 2008

DAY ONE

All suggestions/comments/criticism taken on board. Moderation (unavoidable at a mainstream site) will be made speedier. Solutions will be found. Justice will be delivered!

Remember, we’re only 24 hours or so into this. Don’t fear the newness. Only a few years ago my site had no comments facility at all; I used to get slammed for that, too. And later for allowing too many comments. Now, for not posting comments quickly enough ...

Sunday, May 11, 2008

SITE MOVED

The new site - the shiny new Daily Telegraph site - is only an hour or so old as I write and very much a work in progress. No links yet to other blogs, nor do I have any idea how comments are meant to happen. Give it (and me) a few days.

Massive thanks are owed to Florida’s Andrea Harris, who patiently and expertly hosted me for five years and who during that time became something of a cult figure in Australia. It took the might of News Corporation to lure me away, Andrea.

BIG LOSERS STILL BIG LOSERS

Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone and 300 Labour councillors were not the only casualties of the local and London elections. No one seems to have noticed, but the other big losers were those people who care about the environment.

We might just look back on May Day 2008 as the moment when the power of green politics peaked and went into reverse. I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt it. The reaction of the two main parties to the elections was instructive ...

Mr Brown was not alone in relegating the environment to the back burner. David Cameron, the wind in his sails after the elections, held a prime ministerial press conference in which he set out his priorities for government. Significantly, the words “environment” and “climate change” did not appear in his 1,200-word statement.

THE REFFOS RUDD REJECTS

An Asylum Seeker Research Centre report says the immigration department has knocked back 41 of the 42 cases it has had referred to it since Labor took power after the November 2007 election, a rejection rate of 97.6 per cent.

As a long haul driver in the US I can remember driving through Montana during the winter about ten years ago in -80° F weather. In order to heat the cab of the truck I would put the heater controls on cab heat and watch the windows frost up. Then I would put the controls on window defrost and start freezing my feet. There wasn’t enough heat in the diesel engine to do both jobs at the same time.

I passed a truck on the side of the road that had his fuel jelled and he had to walk a half of a mile to get some alcohol to melt the wax. Fortunately the truck stop in Billings was a balmy -60° F because all the trucks had their engines running, so I was able to sleep without becoming a carbon popsicle. In temperatures like that diesel engines can become so cool that they’ll stop because the compression temp. is too cool for combustion.

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

JOCK PAULL

ENFORCEMENT BRANCH STRIKES

Canada will be probed on suspicion of violating rules for registering greenhouse gases that are the mainstay of a UN-led fight against global warming, official documents show.

Ottawa could be suspended from rights to trade carbon dioxide if found to be in breach of the rules by the enforcement branch of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol. Greece was suspended last month, the first nation to face such a sanction under Kyoto.

Possibly Canada – lately punching out carbon at a level way above its Kyoto target – was simply trying to avoid committing New Zealand-style Kyotocide. Similar woes in the UK:

Labour’s new green targets will cost every family in Britain more than £3,000, a Government dossier has warned. The decision by ministers to sign up to “unachievable” EU pledges on renewable energy will leave taxpayers with a £75billion bill.